The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables

David Bellos

Mar 2017 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by David Bellos

About this audiobook

Putting a century of scholarship on one of the world's most enduring popular novels into accessible, narrative form, this new approach to a classic of world literature is written for a wide general readership. Packed full of information about the book's origins and later career on stage and screen, The Novel of the Century brings to life the extraordinary story of how Victor Hugo managed to write his novel of the downtrodden despite a revolution, a coup d'etat, and political exile; how he pulled off the deal of the century to get it published; and how he set it on course to become the novel that epitomizes the grand sweep of history in the nineteenth century. This biography of a masterpiece also shows how and why the moral and social messages of Les Miserables are full of meaning for our time.

About the author

David Bellos, the Meredith Howland Pyne Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University, is an award-winning translator and biographer and the author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? and The Novel of the Century. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.